Medication
The first night I saw it, I thought that my medication had finally failed me. After the years of unfailingly controlling my hallucinations, it had finally failed. I'm sorry. My name is Isaiah, and I suffer severe forms of multiple personality disorders. If I were to read out the list of all of them to you, you would become bored with me and leave -- or perhaps you would flee out of fear. I mentioned my medication. It was experimental; the only thing that could keep my disturbed mind under control. It worked, for the most part. It's just a shame that it wasn't approved anywhere in the world aside from certain areas of Kyrgyzstan, but even there it was controversial. No one really knows about the medication except for me, Dad, my younger brother Mikael, and the guy who always wears black clothing. I don't know who he is. All I know is that he's the guy who gives us the medication. He gives it to us free of charge, but I don't know why. I ask my dad why it's free, but he always looks away and quickly changes the subject. I never had many friends. At least, not great ones. School was always the worst for me, especially before I started taking my medication. I would talk to the things that I saw, what I called "The Tall People." When other kids -- or adults -- asked who I was talking to, I reportedly responded with, "Don't you see them, too?" Once I was medicated, things didn't improve by much. I became spacey and slow, zoning out easily and rarely paying attention to what people were saying to me. Oftentimes I found myself confused at what was happening around me, and wondering why everyone's eyes were inexplicably on me. As embarrassed as I am to say it, I always thought I was one of the popular kids because of how often other kids stared at me. I remember when I first realized that something was wrong with me. As a high school senior, some of my "friends" invited me to a party out by a lake. When I arrived there -- having ridden by bike there, since I had yet to pass my driving test -- I was surprised to find that none of my friends were there. I stood there dumbly, at the foot of the dock, trying to figure out where they could be. I felt something hit the back of my head, and then I was submerged in the chilled water. As I sank down, I saw my friends standing on the dock. They had been behind me while I was standing there, trying not to laugh their stupid asses off at my idiocy. I finally settled at the bottom of the lake, still staring up at my friends, who were laughing harder than ever, beer bottles in hand. I don't know how I got out of the lake, since I can't swim. The next thing I knew, though, my friends were staring in shock as I approached them. One of my friends, Mitch, had brought his girlfriend along for the little stunt, which she seemed to have enjoyed. I'd had a crush on her for some time, and she had cheated on Mitch just to see me. But now, her alliance with Mitch was obvious. For the first time in my life I felt anger -- no, more than anger. It was wrath, rage. I woke up lying on the ground, beside a puddle of blood. Not my blood, because I was unharmed and healthy. My friends were nowhere to be found, but their cars were still up on the dirt road by the lake. I noted the slight red tinge in the water as I drank from the lake. Dad, my brother, and I moved around a lot after that. We never stayed in one place for long, for some reason. Mikael seemed to be afraid of me, and Dad acted strangely, but everything else was otherwise normal. I never questioned where my dad got my medication after we had moved away. The man who supplied it couldn't possibly be nearby now, after all the moving we had done. The first night I saw it, I thought my medication had finally failed me. He was one of The Tall People I had talked to as a kid, but he was more reclusive and... almost threatening. He stood outside my bedroom window, at the edge of the woods. He stared at me, but I didn't see any eyes on his face. It was the first time in over a decade that I'd seen him, and I was afraid this time. I guess, as a kid, you don't really know to be afraid of the unknown. But as a young adult, fear of the unknown tears apart your mind the very moment that it reveals itself before you. It was wintertime when I first saw him, and the song Silent Night was playing on the radio downstairs, which added to the eeriness of the incident. I woke up the next morning feeling different. My mind was, of course, hazy from the medication, but there was an almost... awareness within my mind. Dad wasn't there that morning; he was probably out at the casino, gambling. My brother was outside, sitting out in the snow. As I opened up the cupboard to take my standard four morning pills, I stopped. I looked at the four pills in my hand and instead slipped them into the trashcan. I was done. I went blank for a long time. By the time I came back to my senses, I was lying in a hospital bed. Dad was there, Mikael was there, and... out in the hall, through the open door, I could see the tall man again. But after a nurse pushing a cart passed by him, he disappeared. Dad tried talking to me, but the overwhelming ringing in my ears overpowered all the sounds around me. It only took a few seconds for me to pass out from spontaneous exhaustion. The room was dim, and there was no one around me. The only source of light was the emergency light, which was flashing in regular intervals of a few seconds. Accompanying that was an irritating buzzing alarm sound. I jumped out of the hospital bed and crashed face-first into the floor. I had become uncoordinated. I realized that there was a tube stuck in my arm, so I forcefully pulled it out and immediately felt dizzy. I wobbled my way to the wall, where I leaned against it in order to maintain my balance. I breathed heavily and fought the urge to close my eyes and fall asleep. The alarm sound faded away and was replaced with the ringing in my ears instead. Sweat drenched my face, and I was slowly falling to the floor. My legs couldn't support me. Finally, I lost the battle against my fatigue. This time, I was immersed in pitch darkness. Not even the emergency light was on now. I stood up and felt a pain surge up my right leg. I was too dizzy to make sense of it all, so I hobbled weakly out of the room and into the hall. The doors to all the rooms were open, but the moment I tried to enter them, the doors slammed shut. At the end of the hall there was a faint light, so I tried to move towards that. The closer I came to it, the weaker I became, until I fell unconscious for a third time. I was in the hospital lobby, which was surprisingly brightly lit. The walls were spattered in blood. Cryptic messages were written in the walls, such as, "Go dOwn" and, "SeES yoU." It was then that I realized why my leg was experiencing such pain. There was a bloody wound in the shape of an X encircled in the letter O on the lower half of my leg. It was already starting to scab over, which told me that I had been unconscious for some time. I wandered around the room until my slow mind finally discovered the elevator, which had been wide open the whole time, but I'd been too empty-headed to realize it was there. I had no choice but to go in. I didn't move on my own, my legs guided me. The doors closed on their own, and the elevator descended on its own accord. The lights suddenly dimmed and the elevator came to a screeching halt before I heard the sound of heavy elastic bands stretching to their limit and snapping. The elevator jerked violently, and I was thrown against the wall and nearly passed out. Then it began to fall. The elevator plummeted downwards, far past what should have been the lowermost floor. The doors swung open suddenly, and I could see everything rushing by. Room, after room, after room. All of them were lit brightly, and blood was splattered on the walls of each of them. Then, for a fraction of a second, I could have sworn I saw the tall man standing at the back of one of the rooms. He appeared again and again in each room, coming closer and closer, until the elevator inexplicably slowed its death plummet and came to a screeching halt in the hospital morgue. I stepped out of the elevator dizzily, and then fell to the floor and vomited. I couldn't focus my mind anymore. The ringing had grown too intense, and I was left terrified by the sight of the tall man. I crawled at first, but I pushed myself up off of the floor and started my aimless limping again. The scent of smoke filled my nose, and so I followed it. I walked through the morgue, the ringing growing ever stronger, and the light getting dimmer and dimmer. Then, the smoky smell became unbearable. Suddenly the emergency lights flashed on and the alarm sounded again, and the room was bathed in light. I stood before a crematorium, with smoke pluming out from under the heavy steel door, which was hanging open by a few inches. Small flames licked at the underside of the door, trying to reach to me. My mind scattered as the ringing in my ears grew louder than the alarm. I turned around, and there was the tall man, standing before me. Countless long arm-like tendrils extended from his back and wrapped around the walls, creating an impenetrable darkness around me. The shadows grew and grew, until there was nothing left but me and the tall man. I felt unaware, now. I didn't comprehend what was there. I didn't see, nor hear. The tall man stared at me as I felt my very soul being torn apart, and replaced with his darkness. ... I returned to a normal life, more normal than before. No medication, no madness, and no hallucinations. Well... maybe "no" isn't the right word to describe my hallucinations. I feel normal, though, even when I'm sitting in the remains of someone who was once close to me, and even when I'm slathering their blood onto my walls in the shape of the X in the circle. I am normal. Category:ManraptorHurrr's Content Category:Original Content Category:Stories Category:Fiction Category:Horror